Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
One night after beating the Indians 10-3 on a cold, rainy, sparsely attended night at the Stadium, the Yankees beat the Indians 9-2 on a cold, rainy, sparsely attended night at the Stadium.
The Yankees jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first when a leadoff walk to Johnny Damon came around to score on a Derek Jeter double and a Bobby Abreu sac fly. Kei Igawa, meanwhile, looked sharp early, getting ahead of hitters and allowing only a Travis Hafner single in the first two frames.
Most of the scoring occurred in the third inning. Igawa started off the third by ringing up Josh Barfield for his third strikeout of the game, but Kelly Shoppach followed with a double to right and Igawa's 0-2 pitch to Grady Sizemore slipped out of his hand and plunked Sizemore in the tuchus. Igawa got ahead of Jason Michaels as well, but Michaels singled to plate Shoppach on the 0-2 pitch. Again, Igawa got ahead of Travis Hafner 0-2, but his next pitch was in the dirt and rolled away from Jorge Posada, sending Michaels to second. Hafner then tapped a slow three-hopper to the shortstop hole for an infield single that plated Sizemore. Igawa then started Ryan Gargo off with a ball, just the second time in his first 13 batters that his first pitch was out of the strike zone. On his next pitch, Garko hit a check swing flare over the mound. In reaching for it, Igawa sent his glove flipping into the air. Robinson Cano charged and scooped the ball after two quick hops, flipping it to Jeter in one motion to start a 4-6-3, inning-ending double play.
Trailing 2-1, the Yankees let loose on Jeremy Sowers in the bottom of the third. Jeter kicked things off with his second double in as many at-bats. Abreu singled Jeter home to tie the game. Alex Rodriguez ground into a fielder's choice to replace Abreu at first. Jason Giambi doubled Rodriguez home to give the Yankees a 3-2 lead. Posada singled Giambi to third. Cano singled Giambi home. Josh Phelps singled Posada home. Melky Cabrera flied out for the second out, and Johnny Damon finished the job by singling Cano home and knocking Sowers out of the game.
Igawa gave up just a walk and Travis Hafner's third single over his remaining three innings, again starting eight of the ten hitters he faced with strikes and erasing Hafner's single with a double play. All totaled, he threw 67 percent of just 92 pitches for strikes and struck out five in six innings while allowing just seven base runners on five hits (four singles, three by Hafner, one that weakly tapped infield single), a walk, and a hit-by-pitch.
Scott Proctor, Sean Henn, and Chris Britton added three more hitless innings to finish the job, each recording one strike out, with Proctor and Britton each issuing a walk.
Oh, and those last three Yankee runs? Yeah, another two-run Alex Rodriguez jack and a solo shot by Jason Giambi, back to back off different pitchers in the sixth no less. In case you're wondering, Rodriguez is on pace for 112 home runs, 287 RBIs, 199 runs scored, 62 doubles, and 237 hits. He's slugging .981 (no, that's not his OPS).
To sum up, in these first two games against the Indians, the Yankees have outscored Cleveland 19-5, two Yankee rookies have picked up their first major league wins, and the bullpen has contributed seven hitless, scoreless innings while issuing just two walks.
Before tonight's game they were tied. Despite his best efforts, A-Rod fell behind Boston thanks to Lowell, Mirabelli and Ortiz.
On a side note, the second-leading home run hitter on the Red Sox is now a backup catcher who plays once every five days and had a slugging percentage of .328 last year.
6 IP, 2H, 0R, 0 BB, and 10 Ks!
This included at one point retiring 15 in a row (8 on strikeouts).
Re: SLG = .981- David Pinto said something last year that totally changed how I think about slugging. Think of it like this- each at bat, Arod starts off 98.1% of the way to 1st base. Unreal.
More specifically, Farnsworth should only pitch when the team has > 3 run leads if at all possible, and should be traded for prospects at the first reasonable opportunity.
Where does that come from anyway? I only know it from Shawshank Redemption and the crossover song by Utada Hikaru.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0MUv4wMiDk4
And a big fat best wish to Alex's wedding day!
Congrats again, Alex and Emily.
Cheers, y'all!
In yesterday's game thread some of us were wondering to each other whether "Dice-K" is really the right pronunciation. What's the "u" there for in the westernized spelling "Daisuke"? Is it a very weak, collapsed vowel (like the "e" in "vowel", say), or is it just an articulation or a stop? Or what?
I think somehow Gil Meche is responsible. He's doing it to justify his salary.
So how many save opportunities has Mo actually had, one?
Now, maybe Sir Farns is hurt. I have a feeling, however, that Torre is more concerned about how he'd feel about being "demoted" from late game work to middle innings in a blowout.
Finally, why couldn't Igawa throw a few more pitches yesterday? He was only up to 92. I am not suggesting he go out and throw 200, but I'm sure one more inning was possible. It might not sound like much, but that would be one less inning on Proctor's arm heading into a stretch where three rookies will pitch over the next 4 days. If you think the bullpen is a little tired now, wait until Monday.
Damn, double plays are helpful, aren't they?
Damn, Giambi can be a weapon, can't he?
In the postgame show Posada let Kim Jones in on the friendly ribbing Rodriguez is getting from him and Jeter. After the home run, he and Jeter were jokingly urging Alex to stay humble. Some beautiful tear he's on.
I really hope this is not the farewell tour.
During the game, O'Neill revealed something that, for some reason, had not occurred to me all these years of watching Posada: he's a guess hitter.
Bottom of the fourth Posada watches a fastball down the middle.
O'Neill explains Posada, like many catchers, because he calls games, tries to get into pitcher's heads.
Paul offered that Tino was a guess hitter, too. When Tino got what he wanted, Tino mashed.
O'Neill was not a guesser. He could identify pitches and go with them.
We've been blessed in the past decade to watch some great hitters.
We've got some great hitters now. It's quite a show.
Go bullpen!
Alex & Emily! (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!)
BTW: Phleps is now 4 for 14 while Minky is 5 for 32. How soon before Tea starts playing the former even half time?
And me, I got no problem with the bullpen use. He hasn't had a choice. Though I agree - he should be finding a chance in games like the last two for Farns to straighten himself out.
Apr 18 @SYR 1 0 0.00 0 6.0 2 0 0 10
1OKs, 2 hits and 0 runs in 6 IP isn't bad for a night's work. Also, I read somewhere that Hughes first two starts occurred in 30 degree weather, so that might explain his poor command in those.
Jeter re: Rodriguez
"It's unbelievable. I haven't seen anything like it before.
Seems like everything he hits is a home run. Tonight, he hit one out with one hand. I can't relate, because I can't do it."
11 Why would dinner play a role? It's a day game today. I'm feeling a long lunch break coming on...
I say two more starts like that for Hughes and he's up with the big club. Mid-May at the latest.
This is the Alex Rodriguez everyone thought we was getting, the one-man wrecking crew Rodriguez.
DIE-skay
The "u" is kind of a collapsed vowel, but in a natural intonation it gets run over by the consonants before and after it.
You catch the Soxaholix shout out to you the other day?
They've linked to me before, so I think they must be having a little fun.
http://tinyurl.com/2qoolb
http://tinyurl.com/2sobay
Cool stuff.
Before last night's game, I had an impression that 85-90 pitches might be his ceiling. Not counting the rough innings, once he settles in, his strike/ball ratio seems pretty consistent through out the following frames. However, once he goes over 85, the ratio is off balance. So it seemed to suggest that we may have got ourselves a good-for-5+-innings pitcher on most games. (Small sample. I know.)
I would've loved to have this theory tested last night since we had a 7 run lead, but no such luck.
I thought at first, what a damn waste of a chance not to test out Igawa, but after some mulling over, now I think it's because Igawa never threw on a five-day rotation before, so they might have him throw 5-6 innings on ANY circumstances thru at least before the All Star Break just to let him adjust. A bit taxing to the pen, but worth a shot to groom him in the big leauge? Any thoughts?
As of now, I like him more for his make-up than his performance, but am kinda selfishly want him to stay.
I'm also pretty happy with how Torre has spread the wealth in the pen. After all, we didn't see Vizcaino and we didn't see Bruney last night. As long as everyone's pitching as well as they are, I honestly can't see any one guy getting burned out...
Heck, even Myers looks great.
I was at the game last night, start to finish. I took a page from Alex and went to the Court Street, ordered my pastrami on rye and celray, and went to Monument Park after. Amazing.
Igawa really looked great. SO many first pitch strikes, and the inning in which he gave up runs was in large part because of bad luck. Even his only walk came on the ONLY 3-2 count he had. That came after the Yanks made him sit for a while. And there was only one other 2-0 count, in his last inning.
I think Torre is beginning to understand that he's not quite up to form yet, probably since he doesn't work out during the offseason, kinda like Manny. He ran out of gas in his last starts as he approached 100 pitches, so Torre's gonna work him up to that point. I think if he left him in last night, he might've gotten stung. Great game, though.
29 And as far as O'Neill's thoughts, everybody thought the same of Glavine and Moyer, and a lot of people STILL think that way of Moyer. But the crafty lefties figure out a way to get it done, and I think Igawa will be fine, at least in the early going....
We should also remember that it's still early (less then 10% into the season) and that it's been very cold. For Iggy-san, add in issues of the 5 man rotation and longer season, and I think the Yanks are just taking it easy will him initially. By May, I think we will see all our guys go deeper into the game.
BOS: Tavarez (0-1, 9.00 ERA)
TOR: Halladay (2-0, 2.35 ERA)
This is one we really need the Sox to lose.
Oh, the game's starting. Let's go, Yankees!
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